


Emergency Backup

by lildogie



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Bulges and Nooks, Detachable Helmsmen, Forced Orgasm, Helmsman technology if HS were a hentai, Multi, Multiple Penetration, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 19:06:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2632877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lildogie/pseuds/lildogie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wrong ship landed in your ambush.  You were expecting a small supply ship with a skeleton crew, and instead you got whatever the hell this is.  It's small and sleek, loaded up with technology you've never heard of, and can't convince to work.  The revolution is screwed unless you can fire up the engines, and... suddenly that's looking like a really tall fucking order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Emergency Backup

**Author's Note:**

> A no-SGRUB AU, wherein helmsman technology is experimental, unheard of outside the upper echelons of the fleet. Also, pretty straight up tentacle hentai. Please mind the tags & warnings!

  
You barrel down the corridor, footsteps echoing on the steel walkways. At an intersection, you stop, call the blueprints to mind, then growl in frustration and choose the turn that looks marginally more wired. You're wheezing slightly, testament to too many hours spent parked in front of your computer. There's blood on your tongue from a cut inside your cheek, but that and a few bruises are the worst you've sustained; there are advantages to being a long-distance fighter. Everyone else on your team looks worse. Not as bad as the opposition, though. You jump over the slumped body of a soldier that's jamming a pair of doors and sprint on. 

  
The wrong ship landed in your ambush. You were expecting a small supply ship with a skeleton crew, and instead you got whatever the hell this is. It's small, too, but sleek like a strikefowl, loaded up with technology you've never heard of. The crew was larger than you anticipated, and better trained. You had to attack anyway, or you'd never have had a prayer of sticking to your timetable, but it took so long to subdue them all that now you're hopelessly behind. 

  
You come to a halt in a wide open roundabout. Five new corridors lead away from you, and none gives you any indication where the engineblock might be. This ship bears no resemblance to the schematics you spent months memorizing. And although you managed to commandeer the damn thing, you haven't been able to coax it into starting. Nothing on the bridge will respond. It doesn't even seem like you're locked out of the system—you were prepared for that—any command you try, via voice or direct input, just produces a vaguely pathetic-sounding beep or whirr. Just your luck that you'd seize a malfunctioning ship. You couldn't wrest so much as a diagnostic out of the computer from the bridge, so you need to go to the source. If you could just _find_ it before the voices muttering at the back of your pan start to sound any more familiar. 

  
_Think, Captor, think._ You may not know _this_ ship, but you do know _ships._

  
You look down. Here, it's open beneath the grillwork floor, and you can see down two decks. There seem to be a lot of blinking lights on the bottom deck, but you can't make out more than that. You close your eyes and try to picture the way you've just come. You should be roughly at the center of the deck. Judging from the slim profile of the ship, there shouldn't be more than three, total, and a centrally located engine would be fairly standard. 

  
Fuck it. No one said you had to keep the ship pretty. 

  
You rise into the air and focus your psionics into two sets of claws. They hook into the grill and you grimace, feeling the resistance like a taut wire between your temples. You inhale, exhale. The steel groans, then shrieks, and crumples. You snort in satisfaction, float down, and rip the next deck open with greater ease. 

  
The floor on the bottom level is solid. It's dim down here, but there are more instrument panels set into the walls than you've seen anywhere but on the bridge. One narrow corridor leads away in front of you. You turn around to find a set of titanium doors nearly twice as tall as you, and extremely solid-looking. There's a keypad next to them. When you tap it, it demands your access code. 

  
You press down hard on the 2 and fry the thing. The charred panel clatters to the floor. You reach into the hole and root around, pulling wires from their sockets at random. There's a hydraulic hiss, and you yank your arm out as the doors slide open. 

  
The block beyond is darker still. You step inside and narrow your eyes, squinting into the gloom, then close them to give them a moment to adjust. There's electricity in the air; it stands the hair on the back of your neck up a little straighter. A smell that isn't machinery catches your attention: not the oil and steel you expect, but something closer to blood. Your eyes snap open and the block takes shape around you. You thought the whole crew had come out to repel you, but none of your team made it down here; someone could be hiding out, wounded. 

  
Thick cables almost hide the walls from view, circling the block like ribs. The ones at head height are the thickness of your arm; the ones lying along the floor are as wide across as your shoulders. You pick your way around, searching for hidden soldiers, but as your eyes continue to adjust, you don't find any. You can't find any instrumentation, either. Or an engine. 

  
"Damn it," you mutter. If you can't get this heap off the ground, you won't make it to the rendez-vous with Feferi and the others, and the whole coup will fail because of _you._ You might not get another chance. Especially if Feferi is caught. "Shit... _Shit!_ " Your eyes spark; psionics dance along your arms before you shut them down. _Maybe..._

  
Something moves in the space above you. 

  
You freeze. You suddenly feel how open the block is overhead, that the ceiling is nowhere near as close as it was in the corridor outside. You know you need to look up, but it feels like standing on the edge of a ravine, in reverse, and for a moment you can't bring yourself to lift your eyes. 

  
Screw this so incredibly hard. You're in the middle of an attempted coup and you've wandered into a horror movie? You can't be the slurry-sucking shitsponge who wanders off alone and gets culled by the malfunctioning drone; it's genre-hopping hoofbeastshit and you won't stand for it. 

  
The darkness yawns above you. The space stretches before your depth perception corrects itself. It's darker above than below, darkest where the ceiling should be. You narrow your eyes, peer upward with a growing sense of foreboding. Your stomach twists and clenches before your pan registers the sound. Then you hear it. Slithering. A chill moves through you. That can't be right. Slitherbeasts don't make that much noise. The sound is on too large a scale, at too high a volume. 

  
That smell again. Not quite blood, but with a coppery tang that sets your teeth on edge. Your hindbrain wants to leave. It's certain you should. But despite the tension building in your gut, you're frozen in place, straining for the rest of the picture. 

  
A spark flares in the darkness above you. You focus on it, but it's gone. Then another crackles, a foot away from the first. 

  
The slithering sound increases in volume, and the next spark is closer, pale green, running along a curving surface you can't quite see before it disappears. 

  
You take two steps back that feel like dragging your feet through tar as the susurrations come closer, your eyes still searching for the unseen source. Then it lowers into the light. 

  
At first, you can't parse the images. The colors and shapes don't mean anything, the disjointed pieces don't add up to a recognizable whole. It's a multicolored tangle of cable bigger than you are, the ends leading up into obscurity. Only there's something gray protruding from one coil... like a hand. And is that a knee? And the cables are moving... writhing around and through each other. 

  
The hand—it's definitely a hand—twitches, and a pale green spark fires from one fingertip, races away along the nearest cable, up into the dark. 

  
There's a troll in there. A psionic. 

  
The knot thins as the cables stretch downward, and a head and shoulders emerge. 

  
"Oh, god," you whisper. 

  
She's older than you, broader, with cropped hair and large, butting horns. Her eyes are closed and her lips are stretched around a cable. 

  
Only the cables aren't plastic. As they come closer, you can see: they're smooth but soft, organic, dripping something transparent and viscous that gleams in the low light. That cable thrusts into her mouth and a pale spark jumps from her lips, races upward. 

  
That sound, that insinuating sound, that blood-tinged smell, is coming from them. You can't make it out, yet, but as more of her emerges from the tangle, you can see the way her limbs are ensnared, the way her body rocks with their movement... How each twitch and shudder produces another weak spark for them to draw off. They're harvesting her power. Sucking it right out of her. 

  
You clench your fists, psionics racing up your arms. To hell with _this._

  
That's when the cables all thrust inward, and the troll in their midst gives a muffled cry, eyes opening wide. A bright burst of green flashes from her eyes, then splits, runs away along myriad cables. Then the cables draw off, untangling one limb at a time, dipping lower and lower until they deposit her naked form on the block's steel floor. She groans as a thick cable disengages from her nook, rises like a rearing slitherbeast dripping dusky red fluid from its tapered head. The last to retract is the one in her mouth. She gasps out a breath and slumps to the floor. 

  
You dash forward, ignoring the cables whose hovering ends are poised around her like they're still hungry. "Hey! Hey! Are you alright?" 

  
She blinks hazy, rust-hued eyes at you as you hunker down beside her. 

  
"I'm gonna get you out of here," you say. You're trying to think first aid, coming up against a dire lack of understanding of the situation. 

  
She raises one hand and you reach for it, thinking she wants help up, but she drops her fist by her temple. "You my relief?" 

  
"What?" 

  
" _Teek,_ " she says, weary but urgent. 

  
You look at her, the fist still raised... in salute. She's not a prisoner. She's crew. So what the fuck is this? 

  
She sees you looking up at the pendulous cables. "No training?" She lets her head fall back with a groan. "It's too late. Just let them pilot from the bridge." She lifts her hand into the air. "Control." 

  
Another cable... tentacle... slithers down from above. A screen is suspended at the end as if it grew out of the living cable. It hovers before her raised hand, casting a pale blue light. Her fingers are flying over the surface before it comes level with her eyes, colors and soft tones responding to every touch. There's a final, low tone, and her hand falls to the ground. 

  
It looks like it takes an effort to turn herself toward you. The cable holding the control panel extends over her. You shuffle back and rise to your feet. "They didn't brief you?" she asks. 

  
You shake your head. 

  
"The impulse engines are shot," she says. "We don't have time to repair them. We had to detour all the way here to rendez-vous with another teek, but you were supposed to be—" She shakes her head. "Doesn't matter. Just put your print on the pad." 

  
The panel moves towards you and you retreat, staring at all the other gleaming wet tentacles behind it. 

  
"This ship is needed at the front lines," she says. "We won't make it back without you and we'll lose the battle, maybe the system!" 

  
You look at her earnest face. You aren't talking about the same battle, but she's right. Time is running out on your plan, and— 

  
"Don't you care about serving your empress?" 

  
You freeze. Feferi's shark-toothed grin fills your mind. You do, you _do_. You take a deep breath. "All glory to Peixes," you say, and press your palm firmly to the pad. 

  
The soldier slumps to the floor. "Good man," she says. "Just relax and let the helm do the work." 

  
The cables hanging poised above her turn like a nest of vipers catching your scent, and you take a step back, ice water down your spine. 

  
"It feels strange the first time," she says calmly. "Just remember to switch to bridge control. You can't handle the helm without training." 

  
"What...?" you say, staring at the cables. They stretch towards you through the air as the control panel retracts. You reach after it and a slim, ropelike cable reaches for your wrist. You snatch your hand away. "No, wait—" 

  
Something lashes around your ankle and yanks. You fly off your feet, but before you can engage your psionics, cables shoot under you, cradling your back like arms. Your other foot is caught and you're lofted into the air. You twist, trying to roll off the cables under your back, and one loops around your waist, ruffling the hem of your shirt and sliding against your skin. It's slippery, soft and porous like the surface of a tongue. You shudder and try to pull out of its grip, but it tightens. Below the spongy surface, the core could be steel. You catch your breath and your horns spark. The energy races down, somewhat painfully across your neck, and is drawn off along a cable. 

  
"Calm down." 

  
"What do you mean, calm down?!" Your voice ends on a shriek as a cable licks its way across your neck and clamps in place, forcing your head back. 

  
"Don't have to use your psionics, cadet—the helm'll... draw them out." 

  
Several little tongues lap at your throat and you squeal in surprise. You reach to pull them away, but something wet and cool slaps around one wrist and pulls it away from your body, then the other. All the strength in your shoulders only serves to make you sway in the tentacles' grip. They stretch with you and wind further down your arms, then pull back, solid as concrete. When you try to move them psionically, the energy won't go where you want; it gets siphoned straight out along the wires. 

  
The tongues at your neck slip under your collar, painting wet trails over your thorax. You bow your back to escape them, but the cables beneath you bear you up. The ones in your shirt shoot back, shredding the fabric. 

  
You can't see your body at the angle your head is held; you're staring up into darkness. With a wet hiss that makes your skin crawl, more cables snake down, green and blue and purple, like a medley of highblood viscera, leaving glistening trails as they part from their tangle, dripping tips homing in on you. 

  
You make a low sound in your throat. "Hey," you say. "Hey, you still with me?" 

  
"Relax, cadet." The soldier's voice is faint and fading. "It won't hurt you. Just remember to turn over control, and..." 

  
"And?" you ask, as the tongues drag over your abdomen and hook under the waistband of your pants. "And?!" 

  
One tendril snakes down your trouser leg. You squirm, which does nothing. It reaches the cuff and gives two sharp tugs, yanking your hips up, but the denim isn't as imminently shreddable as your shirt. The tendril retracts and several narrower ones descend. You twist and buck as they pluck at the button of your jeans. Another thick, wet band slithers around your chest, dragging over first one, then both grub scars. 

  
You give a strangled groan and feel sparks go off. They run up the cables. 

  
The nimble little biowires manage to pop the button and unzip your jeans, and then so many of them slip under your waistband they're like wet hair against your skin, and they peel your pants straight off you. Your underwear comes off like an afterthought, half-torn, and you kick, but your calves are immediately enveloped in a wave of small tendrils, bunched like anemones, the sensation against your skin making you jump. 

  
_Calm down,_ you tell yourself. You saw how she... interfaced with it. Jesus nook-splitting fuck, how are you supposed to relax into that?! 

  
A wide, wet tentacle slicks its way down your stomach and between your legs, dragging over your nook. 

  
You shriek and clamp your thighs together. Fuck, fuck, you can't do this. You need the ship, but... but...! 

  
The tentacle locked between your knees drips moisture down your thighs as if you were squeezing a fruit. The slippery fluid feels... a lot like your natural lubrication—Jesus—only you can't produce in this volume. It slides down your legs and pools in the delta of your groin. It drips down your ass, between your cheeks. 

  
Despite how tightly your legs are locked, some trickles into the slit of your nook. A shock runs from your sheath to the pit of your stomach. Your legs jerk and part just enough to let the fluid pour down, and even when you clamp them back together, the folds of your nook tingle, a sensation akin to psionics skittering over the sensitive flesh. 

  
You're surrounded. You can hardly see the walls for all the dripping cables poised around you, tips hovering inches or feet away, some snaking between their fellows towards you, some finger-width, others broad as your arm with tapered heads, and still others broader, spatulate. 

  
One of the thicker ones, with a long, tapered head, draws a wet trail across your cheek and brushes across your mouth. It brushes back again, then pushes its narrow tip against the seam of your lips. You clench your teeth. 

  
It nudges at your lips like a wallowbeast nosing in the dirt for frillfungus. You turn your head away and the tongue around your throat shifts, cups your cheek, and pushes your head back into place. 

  
You're trying to rationalize letting it in when what feels like a twist of firewire-sized cables slides into the cleft of your ass. 

  
The tentacles at your mouth and cheek push harder, and as you're busy resisting them, the narrow twist of cable wriggles at your waste sphincter and pushes inside. 

  
You shout in surprise and the tentacle at your lips plunges into your mouth, squeezing its spongy breadth inside to completely fill it, making it impossible to close your jaw. The tapered tip sits heavily at the back of your tongue. Your mouth floods with lukewarm fluid. It's slippery but not thick, slides along the surface of your tongue and roof of your mouth, and the sudden loss of friction lets the tentacle slip into your throat. You stiffen, back arching in an attempt to escape, but the tip stops only a couple inches down and pours fluid. 

  
You swallow frantically around it, expecting to choke, but you don't. There's just this heavy foreign presence invading you, holding you open and forcing you to accommodate it. Each swallow squeezes it, the spongy surface soft and almost stroking your throat. Your fists clench, but you can't get your arms anywhere close to your face, and you're afraid to struggle too hard. 

  
Fluid slides down your protein chute. Despite its sharp taste, it's thin and silky in texture, and everywhere it touches begins to tingle with that subtly electric sensation. 

  
The same feeling gathers in your waste chute, where the twist of cables is slowly turning, spreading fluid and squirting it further up into you. 

  
The thick one between your knees fights to push down, but you have it trapped. Another with a long, tapered head slides across your hips and presses its tip into the fluid pooled at your groin. You clench your legs tighter, then jolt as the cables in your ass untwist and pull apart, spreading your cheeks and opening the sphincter. 

  
Your protest is muffled by the thick mass in your mouth. You can't even really bite with your jaw wedged open, and your attempt to sink your teeth into it just makes more fluid well up. The intensified tingling it causes makes it hard to focus on what exactly is going where. 

  
The little wires in your ass relax, then pull, relax, then pull, stretching your muscles. You whimper, anticipating the sequel, and feel your sheath loosen and stretch, your first bulge trying to push out, because apparently your signal-crossed failure of a body thinks this sounds like a good time. 

  
You squirm, lift your hips, but another two tentacles slide over your waist and push them down as a wet head presses against your sphincter. The narrow wires pull you as far open as they can, the stretch bordering on painful but simultaneously bringing one bulge out of your sheath. The tapered tip of the larger tentacle presses into you. Barely half an inch in, it's already a tight fit, and then the little filaments slide out and your muscles clamp down on it. 

  
Your eyes roll back in your head. The tentacle sprays a steady stream of lubrication ahead of itself—there's no friction, no pull, but the slow stretch as the head increases in width is so intense that your body locks, every muscle tensed. Your second bulge pokes at the inside of your sheath, painfully, because your sheath isn't loose enough, yet, but perversely, the sharp spike of pain makes both your bulges swell. 

  
The tentacle in your ass stops about two inches in. It's already as wide as three of your fingers, and then it expands. You squeal and squirm as it deflates, pumping fluid into you, then swells again, forcing the muscles around it to stretch. 

  
The tentacle across your chest slithers down towards your waist, and a tongue descends on either side to flicker against your grub scars. You yelp and twist, but they follow you, lapping rapidly, sending pulses of pleasure shooting down your body. Your bulges swell, and you feel your own lubrication begin to flow. You shake your head in denial and gnaw at the cable in your mouth. It just pours more fluid down your throat. 

  
You start to feel heavy as the volume of fluid in your ass increases. Just as it starts to feel too great to contain, the tentacle contracts and fluid rushes out of you, coating your walls, and the tentacle pushes in. 

  
You struggle as hard as you can, rocking and trying to free your limbs. The tentacle ignores you, reaching in what feels like a foot before swelling out to its full width, stretching you all the way in. You scream and flail, and then it draws back, hitting something near the entrance that sends electricity shooting out along your nerves. It slides most of its length out, pressed hard against that spot, pulling your whole body tight as if there were cords attached directly to your muscles. Then it pushes back, and the brute force stimulation arches your spine. Something coils between your legs, and your second bulge just makes it out of your sheath in time for you to come, pouring genetic material over your lap and onto the floor as you jerk and your knees part. 

  
Immediately, cables lash around your knees and yank your legs open. You thrash, but it's weak, as every thrust into your ass makes you shudder, and sparks of your power run away along the wires. Another and another cable wrap around your thighs, forcing them wide. 

  
Several tiny wires move in to massage your sheath, coaxing your second bulge all the way out, then wrapping both bulges and squeezing, inviting the blood back in. 

  
Your writhing does nothing to free you, but you wind up closer to upright, your body slung between your spread arms and captured knees. So you see the huge cable that descends to hover between your legs. 

  
It tapers to a blunt head roughly the circumference of a troll caegar, but widens rapidly to the thickness of your thigh. 

  
_Oh, no._ You saw how it plugged into the soldier, and that isn't going to work with your anatomy. There is a severe incompatibility issue, but you don't have any way of communicating that with your mouth stuffed, so you thrash as the one tentacle continues to fuck your ass, and the others flicker over your grub scars, and then a series of small ones wind around your horns and you come again. The tendrils milk your bulges, riddling you with tremors, lighting the darkness above you with rivulets of red and blue psionics. 

  
You're recalled from orgasmic blankness by the blunt head of that huge cable nudging aside the folds of your nook and pressing down to find your entrance. Only with you, it isn't entrance, singular, it's entrance _s_ , and just like your twinned bulges, they are narrower than the average troll's. 

  
The tentacles around your thighs squeeze to the point of pain as you try to wrench them closed. The one inside you thrusts harder and faster and you come again, material pouring from your bulges and nook over the thick tentacle nudging at your folds. You moan a weak protest as it pushes at the division between your two nook openings. The tip slides to the left and pushes, and your hips jerk back, trying to recoil. It tries again, slides right, and makes a concerted effort to burrow. 

  
It hurts, but even so, the stimulation of the nerves around the opening has the muscles inside clenching, wanting that cable to force its way in. You shake your head, despairing, and the wires around your horns slide and stroke. You sob with frustration and confusion. You want the damn thing inside you, your body doesn't care, but you know that breadth will rupture you, and— 

  
It pulls back. You relax slightly, half disappointed, but two slimmer cables snake down in its place, and without further preamble, part your folds and wriggle into your nooks. 

  
The entire room flares a bright, flickering, blue-red. Psionics stream up the cables. The tentacles delve into your nooks, stretching your walls, rubbing each other through the membrane that separates them. You flinch when they push too deep and they shy back and pause. 

  
Your chest heaves, your nostrils flaring, your throat working to swallow. Little tongues trace your ears, flicking the lobes. You shiver and whine, plaintive, wanting. If it weren't for the constant thrust of the cable in your ass, you might scream at the thick, unmoving weight in your nooks. Then one retreats, all the way to the opening, and as it pushes back in, the other withdraws. Your inner walls bulge as they pass each other inside you. 

  
Tears streak your cheeks. You are gone, nothing but clenching muscles and frantically firing nerves. When the huge tentacle curves under you and nudges at your waste chute, you try to open your legs further, and all you can think is _Yes, yes, more, good, yes._ Everything that can possibly fit, you want it. The one that's been inside you slithers out, and the thicker one presses in. 

  
You groan as it stretches your sphincter wide, then wider, ploughing a gaping furrow through you. When the tentacles cross in your nooks, the sensation of fullness is so intense you feel like you'll fly apart, and you do, genetic material arcing from your bulges, cascading from your nooks. 

  
  
_"Does it hurt?" Aradia asks, her callused hands gentle on your thighs._

  
_You shake your head. It's a lie, but you want her inside you so badly. You open your arms and she lowers herself over you, all soft curves and hair like settling clouds, and her thick bulge in your nook brings tears to your eyes, so you bury your face in her rumblespheres._

  
_You love her voice when she's aroused, the sharp upward spike in her smoky tone. She forgets herself and pushes her rumblesphere into your mouth as she rocks into your nook. You suck and she arches her back, murmuring your name soft and sweet, telling you how good you are, how flushed she is for you._

  
  
It's so bright. Arcs of power, red and blue, wind around each other like dragons in a midnight sky. There's so much in you, so much to give and so much to take. You're a conduit, a pathway for power and the ebb and flow of the cables surging through you, a perfectly functioning component of a vast and powerful whole. 

  
  
_You lean back into Gamzee's arms. He's all knees and elbows, even where he shouldn't be, but his curls against your cheek are soft like hers were, and the way he holds you is even more careful, like you're not quite solid and he doesn't want to risk letting any of you fall away. "You_ sure _on this?" he asks for the fiftieth time._

  
_"I'm fucking sure, Jesus Christ," you say, but you nuzzle his cheek and give the broad hand on your stomach a surreptitious pat._

  
_"He's got more in his sponge than you, to be worried," Karkat grumbles from between your legs._

  
_You're perched on Gamzee's lap at the edge of the mating platform, half of his long, ridged bulge a satisfying pressure in your waste chute._

  
_Karkat squats between your knees, scowling at your nook like it's personally impugned his coding skills. He slides two fingers back into you and you catch your breath as he hooks them up, massaging the nerve clusters along the upper walls. He leans in to mouth your sheath, darts his tongue between your bulges._

  
_You keen, leaning hard against Gamzee, who kisses your temple. "Come on, yes," you whine, "don't tease me, KK, come_ onnn..." 

  
_He glances up at his moirail. "Fuck him properly so he'll shut up, will you?"_

  
_"Bro?" Gamzee murmurs._

  
_"Mm, fuck, yes, GZ, move."_

  
_He does, holding you up against his torso so he can roll his hips, working his bulge into and out of you while never—to your eternal frustration—letting you have more than half._

  
_Karkat gets both your bulges in his mouth and leans in hard, working you with his fingers, and you're on the brink of orgasm before you have the presence of pan to push him back and demand his bulge._

  
_You snipe bitterly, but the truth is you enjoy how much the two of them worry over breaking you, and even as you're dying for Karkat to just plough you, you love the care and concern on his face, the tremor in his voice as he says that the first wince he sees, you're done. Your paired matesprits' hands are all over you, lifting, cradling, gentling, until finally you have them both inside you._

  
_"He's fucking purring," Karkat says, incredulous. "I'm about to overdose on adrenaline here and this grubshitting nookboil is purring."_

  
_Gamzee paps him, then you, for good measure. "That's 'cause you know we got you, huh, brother?"_

  
_You let your head roll back on his shoulder so you can get bits of both of them in your field of vision. You are illogically smug at your capacity, and so full of quadrantmates that the emptiness of one nook can't spoil your enjoyment. "Yeah, KK, so stop being a fucking hatchling, and pail me, already."_

  
  
"Fiddlesticks." 

  
That voice doesn't belong. 

  
In a sudden glare, you see Equius, brow furrowed, sweating profusely. It's the wrong angle; you're not used to seeing him from above. When you squint to refocus, you're abruptly staring at a blue-tinged nostril in unimaginable detail. You jerk your head back and your view readjusts. 

  
Nepeta sits behind him, typing furiously on a husktop. She's covered in dark blue blood. You turn your head and find Karkat pounding his fists on a console while Gamzee hovers, limping, failing to tell him to calm down. 

  
The bridge around them is lit up, screens and panels blazing where they were dark before. You try to see the screen Karkat's cursing at, and information floods your mind. It's not like the voices; this is a jumble of images and knowledge appearing unbidden in your mind, as if you'd just read it. There's volumes of it, streams of coordinates and schematics and manifests and you try to swat it away but your hands don't move. 

  
The ship, you can feel the ship, its corridors, the decks you ripped open, the damaged impulse engines, and the crew roster runs through your mind, all dead but for one rustblood TK whose name is Riadne, and bridge control, she told you to switch to bridge control. 

  
The thought summons two glowing circles before your eyes. The words Bridge and Helm appear by them. You try to touch the top one. Your hand can't escape the slippery coils that hold it, but the word Bridge flashes and the menu blinks out. 

  
The stream of data vanishes from your mind, leaving only traces. 

  
"Fuck," Karkat says, "it worked! Holy shit, I think I've got navigation control!" 

  
The others move toward him, and then the bridge fades from view. 

  
  
You relax into the slippery grasp of the tentacles. They rock into you, opening you, filling you with that conductive fluid that makes current run through your entire body, lets them harvest your psionics. 

  
You have the vague sense that the ship is moving, but that could just be the rush of sensation along your nerves. Every time you think you're finished, you couldn't possibly come again, another filament works its way into you, stretching you further, activating a new nerve cluster, and all you are is electricity and pleasure; perfect, endless. 

  
  
"Brother...? Sollux! Crack an ocular, bro!" 

  
"Oh god, oh god, oh god, he's dead! He's dead! Sollux, you spongeless toolbox, why the shit did you walk off in the middle of a fucking horror movie, you—" 

  
"Who exactly is this?" 

  
"Looks like this fish is still wriggling..." 

  
"She appears to be in the same... ahem... state of disarray as our comrade..." 

  
"This is all my fault. Sollux..." 

  
"He ain't kicked the wicked shit, yet, brother, I got a bead at his pulse right here, but..." You recognize Gamzee's hand stroking your cheek. "Brother ain't lookin' so fierce. Sollux... come on, now, brother..." 

  
There's a sharp, muffled sound. Gamzee whispers, "Shooosh." 

  
"Are you crying, you overgrown grub?" you mutter. Your eyelids are so heavy you feel accomplished for opening them. You're on the floor with Gamzee's arm propping up your shoulders, his heavy jacket draped over you. Karkat's knees touch your side; he's leaning back, blubbering into his arm. 

  
Alright, not blubbering. But that's how you're going to taunt him later. "Sollux!" 

  
You can't see past the two of them very well. "Where's... Riadne?" 

  
"Who... the woman? Was she a prisoner?" 

  
"No, she's crew... but don't hurt her. Please." 

  
"What the hell happened to you?" Karkat asks. "Are you all right? The ship just came to life, and then we had a hell of a time piloting it, and we couldn't find you, and—" 

  
You frown at the barrage of words, close your eyes. "Take it easy," Gamzee says softly. Karkat quiets. "Brother, you fit?" 

  
"I'm fiiiine," you say. You want to sleep for a season, but you feel fantastic. Your limbs are heavy, but flooded with pleasure chemicals, like, if satisfaction was rum, you'd be this oversoaked rum cake, just fucking dripping with the stuff. 

  
"You look like..." Karkat's teeth snap shut. "...you aren't." 

  
"I'm rum cake," you say. 

  
"What?" 

  
"He's good," Gamzee interprets. He knows cake. 

  
"Did we make it?" you ask. "Are we there?" 

  
"With time to spare," Equius supplies from over your matesprits' shoulders. "We can scout the area before we rendez-vous with the heiress." 

  
"That was me." You grin at them. "I just powered this whole fucking skiff." 

  
"How?" The others look around for machinery, engines, but the biocables have retreated into the darkness above, out of sight. From the sound of it, your friends missed seeing you... plugged in. Just as well; Karkat would probably be having multiple aneurysms if he had. 

  
"Psionics," you say, and roll your head into Gamzee's arm. "Tired." 

  
"How 'bout we let him explicate later?" Gamzee suggests, already tucking his jacket around you and lifting you off the floor. 

  
"But—!" 

  
"Later," Gamzee says firmly. 

  
"I agree," says Equius. "It would be best to vacate the area." 

  
"There's a surprise," Karkat grumbles. 

  
You're lifted into the air, and Karkat hovers, checking that you're not hurting anywhere, trying not to ask more questions as Gamzee shoos him away. 

  
You glimpse Riadne bundled in a straitjacket improvised from Equius's coat, slung over Nepeta's shoulder. The soldier is so tall her horns and toes graze the floor as Nepeta trots along. 

  
You nestle into Gamzee's chest as your party's footfalls echo around you. "GZ..." 

  
"What's up, my bifurcated brother?" 

  
"I like this ship." 

  
"Ship what got you feelin' like a rum cake fittin' to crumble to bits?" 

  
"Yeeeeeah. Can we keep it?" 

  
He hums thoughtfully. "I don't know as I like the concept of a vehicle gettin' that degree a intimate on my matesprit." 

  
You stiffen. "You _did_ see." 

  
"Didn't catch whatever was at being the culprit, but we got oculars and sniffnodes, Sollux. Ain't a lotta room for ambiguation. Didn't spot a troll coulda taken the blame, what with big sis over there lookin' near to same as you." 

  
If you weren't fucked to oblivion and back, you'd have put that together yourself. No wonder they're freaking out. You probably should be, too, only it's just a machine. A beautiful, brilliant machine. A machine that can be programmed, and think of what you could _do_ with that. The orgasms you could have—uh, the havoc you could wreak with a ship this fast. The quick glance you got at the computer before you switched it to manual left you with an impression of some crazy weapons systems, too. And you can only imagine what you and Equius could reverse-engineer. 

  
"I'm really okay," you say. "I swear." 

  
He peers into your eyes, his own wide and worried. You're not sure what he's looking for, but you try to show him you mean it. You're good. He strokes your hair back from your forehead and gives you a gentle squeeze. "Be seeing your moirail soon," he says. "Let her pass a verdict at the ship." 

  
You sigh and settle in. It's a good thing the next phase of your battle plan doesn't really require your participation. Unfortunately, you doubt you'll have the chance to wash up before Feferi gets a look at you, and that could hurt the pro-ship case. 

  
You look wistfully around Gamzee's arm. You really hope they let you keep it.


End file.
